Today is Veterans' Day.

[Burning Petard]

Today's Veterans' Day here in the USofA. This is a day to celebrate all those who served in military uniform and survive to tell about it. The last Monday in May is Memorial Day, a day to remember all those who died in service to their country. Here in Newark, DE, I believe we have two living veterans of WWII. One is 98 and the other 102 years old.

Here it means, among other things, lots of restaurants with discounts and specials for veterans. I got up early and went to Denny's for their free breakfast. (You pay for the coffee, the meal is free.) There was some expense on my part. The local Denny's closed during the first six month of Covid, so I had to drive a bit. Counting up the tip, the price of coffee and the gas I burned, It came to about $12.65. This afternoon I will go to the surviving local Friendly's for free hamburger and fries.

"A veteran is a person who wrote a blank check payable to the United States of America for an amount of up to and including one's life."

I signed my check on the first of June, 1960. My son's check was cashed on the 14th of August, 2019.

snailgate

[BoSoxGal]

Thank you for your service, snailgate.

Ditto to any other veterans here.

[Gob]

It's Armistice day here, wearing my poppy with pride.

At 23 yrs old I lost my best mate when The Sir Galahad was hit by Argentinian rockets. Requiescat in pace, Ostrich old chum, you were a good friend.

[BoSoxGal]

I’m so sorry for your loss, Gob.

[Big RR]

While I know the official name is Veterans Day, I've always thought of Veterans Day as a made up Monday holiday (it changed bac to Nov 11 in the late 70s), and Nov 11 as Armistice Day--goes back to early grade school (even though the official name was Veterans Day, even then, all the teachers called it Armisitice day--and we used to read the Flanders Field poem every year , and that 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the guns fell silent is burned into in my memory). Not that I don't celebrate all veterans for the sacrifices they made and continue to make, I do; I just don't like the change in the name.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Bit of a nerve stealing November 11 - a date dedicated to those who died in the service of their country - just because Americans already have Memorial Day on the last Monday of May. Typical imperialist bulldozing Jonathans

Respect for service - all well and good. But not on a day reserved for sorrow. Put your Veterans' Day somewhere else.

[Burning Petard]

I too, think of this as 'Armistice Day' No longer do Vet organizations sell fake poppies for wear on this day. But I do have one still, on a wire wrapped around a hat band. The holiday in late May, I remember as 'Decoration Day" and my hometown of Independence Missouri had a parade on that day that included my Boy Scout troop marching together. The parade ended in the town cemetery and a big-deal speech from some politician. Never stuck around to hear it. I quickly scampered to where my parents were waiting, at the grave of my father's sister, We placed flowers, spoke of shared memories of her, and then escaped the crowd through a gap in the wall and fence where my father had parked nearby.

Yes Nov 11 in my childhood was still a time to remember the Great War to End All Wars. I even knew a veteran who talked funny through a hole in his throat, as a result of gas in the trenches. I think that holiday in May began as a time to think about the war which was mostly about Americans killing Americans, instead of foreigners or natives.

I share much of the cynical regard of Stonekettle, Jim Wright, for our Veterans Day. He usually publishes something harshly critical of American culture on this day. I have not looked. I am sure you could find it if you want to read it.. I put that in the folder marked 'dead horses, well beaten'

Time is the great leveler here in America. Labor Day now has little connections with Unions. The American Legion tells me less than one percent of living Americans have had any time wearing a military uniform. Our biggest shared holiday experience is special commercial sales and promotions. Wallmart is having a big sale today, to honor Veterans' Day. Morgan Chase has a large commercial banking center on one of the main roads out of Newark, DE. I noticed Wednesday they have three flag poles at their entrance: two smaller ones with the company flag or the Delaware state flag flying at the top of each pole. Centered between them is a slightly taller pole, with a larger American flag, NOT EVEN HALF WAY UP THE POLE. The three flags were still displayed that way at 7am this morning, when I went in and told a security guard that that was giving the middle finger salute to every veteran that drove by.

Never the less, every American veteran did sign that check.

snailgate.

[Big RR]

The American Legion tells me less than one percent of living Americans have had any time wearing a military uniform

That's different from the statistics I have seen:

https://www.thesoldiersproject.org/what ... -military/

This shows 0,7% of the US population currently serves.

Could the Legion be referring to those who saw combat? Thankfully, that has not been as many as in the past. But we have a very large active and reserve (including the National Guard) military; and from what I have heard, they still turn some applicants away.

[liberty]

I remember to this day, a boy I knew from my first neighborhood stuck his thumb in the chain of a cement mixer so he could escape the draft. Everybody was sure you were dead if you went to Vietnam, including my mother.

After I decided to enlist without knowing, my wife called my mother, and the next day, she and my brother showed up at my house. Mama pleaded with me not to volunteer for the army. I told her that I had to do it. I had decided I could not allow communist bullies to win without trying to do something about it. My brother said you're making a mistake; you're the type to try to be a hero and get yourself killed and then my mother started crying, which weakened my will. She asked me to go into the Air Force instead of the army. She said you would still be serving there. I agreed; she thought I'd be safe in the Air Force; my mother didn't know that the Air Force also has ground combat units.

To alleviate my guilt for wimpping out, I made a deal with myself I would go into the Air Force, but I would allow my recruiter to select my job. I was sure I would go to a combat unit, but my aptitude test placed me in electronics; the air force trained me as an AC& W radar technician. So, for the first few years of my career, I served as a radar repair technician and a security police augmentee. My brother was right about one thing; if I had entered the air force a few years earlier, I could have been at site 85 when it was overrun by the North Vietnamese and Laotian communist troops. I am the type to volunteer.

[ex-khobar Andy]

This page estimates that there were 18 million veterans in the US in 2018 or 5.5% of the then population (326 million). I don't know if 'veterans' in that count includes current serving soldiers / sailors / aircrew / marines /astronauts etc but that 1% is obviously way too low.

"Air Force also has ground combat units"- does that mean beyond the obvious force protection role - i.e. patrolling the perimeter of the air base? Aircraft and their crew are clearly most vulnerable on the ground; and I assume that the average pilot/aircrew member is trained in use of small arms and survival in case of ditching.

[liberty]

This page estimates that there were 18 million veterans in the US in 2018 or 5.5% of the then population (326 million). I don't know if 'veterans' in that count includes current serving soldiers / sailors / aircrew / marines /astronauts etc but that 1% is obviously way too low.

"Air Force also has ground combat units"- does that mean beyond the obvious force protection role - i.e. patrolling the perimeter of the air base? Aircraft and their crew are clearly most vulnerable on the ground; and I assume that the average pilot/aircrew member is trained in use of small arms and survival in case of ditching.

Perimeter security for Air Force installations is the job of the security police. Despite their name, they are not police; they are, in fact, guards. They performed their duty using foot patrols, vehicle patrols, and dog teams, and most likely, now they use UAVs.

Now, as far as aircrew members trained and armed with small arms, I don't know. I started in ground radar and originally trained in small arms as a security police augmentee. In ADC, Aerospace Defense Command, we didn't have any aircraft, just ground radar sites, and later when I was in AWAC as an E3A radar technician, our plane was a Boeing 707 airframe with no ejection seats. I never noticed our flight crew carrying side arms. If shot down, we didn't expect to survive. The air force removed the bailout shoot the aircraft initially had. The air force's study indicated that if we were shot down, we would never make it out of the aircraft. However, most of my time in AWAC was as a ground radar technician and only a short time as an airborne radar technician.